Another recent watercolor, of a good view from near where I live. #DrawingAugust

Watercolor of trees I saw on a walk in the woods for #DrawingAugust. Looking through the drawings/paintings for the hashtag, most people draw nature. We think nature is beautiful; we love nature; and we are destroying nature. Funny, that.

"[I]n our current approach to tech development, the harms are the norm rather than the exception—and they are lasting, cumulative, and at scale with economic growth. In its current shape, our world system depends on exponential growth." >>

There are so many ways we've poisoned the entire planet, and we find new ways we're doing it all the time. Even if we were able to "solve" climate change, reverse wildlife loss, repair habitats, tear down the dams and free the rivers, the poisons will last for eons.

Nickel mining in Indonesia is destroying forests and marine ecosystems. Nickel is used in batteries and steel, among other things. There is absolutely nothing "green" about EVs, nothing "critical" about "critical minerals". What is critical is flourishing, intact ecosystems. >>

How long is going to take before people stop believing EVs are "green"? How much more biodiversity do we have to lose, how much more forests, how much more pollution will be spewed into the environment, how many more wildlife will be killed, and habitat lost? news.mongabay.com/2025/06/eu-a... >>

“This is potentially a win-win outcome" Not for the environment it's not. Mining is a disaster for every living being and every ecosystem. You can't "global trust" your way out of that.

Support legacy forests by sending a letter to the Washington Commissioner of Public Lands to prevent logging in the Elwha Watershed actionnetwork.org/letters/tell...

A quote from this article: www.theguardian.com/environment/... is  "The world also must ask if it can afford to not mine deep-sea minerals that could help develop low-carbon technologies to fight climate change" >>

Pope Frances didn't understand ecological overshoot. He pushed so-called "solutions" like renewables that simply make overshoot worse, and utterly failed to understand climate change is just one of many symptoms of overshoot. He was a humanist--prioritizing humans over all other life on Earth.

Best way to reduce plastic pellet pollution: stop making plastic pellets. Done. But the idea of stopping makes economists queasy, so we will never do it until human society collapses, possibly because our brains are so full of plastic we can no longer think.

At this rate, it won't be long before our brains are entirely plastic.

At least 70 whales have perished since the start of the year... only five mother-calf pairs... the lowest number of mother-calf pairs ever observed in the lagoon... “We didn’t see a single southbound calf, which has never happened in 40 years" 😭💔😭💔😭💔😭💔 www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Nailed it. Quote from an essay in Noema by Pamela Swanigan: www.noemamag.com/its-time-to-...

The reality of global dimming finally hitting home? China's efforts to clean up sulphate air pollution are, along with the drop in ship sulphate emissions, helping global warming to surge. So... do we all die of air pollution? Or do we clean up the air pollution and die of climate change? 😂🤣😂🤡☠️☠️☠️

Data centers are booming, and fossil fuel companies are booming with them. It doesn't matter how data centers are powered; they are a disaster. The mining to build the computers; the materials for the massive buildings and cooling systems, the energy used; it's a mess.

First nettle soup of the season.

Beautiful description of how amazing life is. "There is great intelligence in time."

Spot on. thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-nuclea...

What's happening at my house right now.

Well worth a read: "Shut Up About Trump—It's Not Resistance Why Obsessing Over American Politics is a Waste of Time" collapsecurriculum.substack.com/p/shut-up-ab...

The bluebird carries the sky on his back. - Henry David Thoreau 📷: Eastern Bluebird

Reminder: Civilization is what you need to deliver false promises and lies without immediately dying. It is the ability to be stupidly detached from reality, yet manage to temporarily avoid the consequences.

More bad news for the soil: "The prevalence of microplastics in soil was more than 15 times its initial level after four years of sewage sludge application" >> www.independent.co.uk/climate-chan...

The only way out is through.

One of the most egregious uses of the word "sustainable" to greenwash destruction I’ve seen recently: “Amazon forest felled to build road for climate summit” describes a “sustainable highway” being built for UNFCCC COP30 in November. >> www.bbc.com/news/article...

"Cities are the human equivalent of livestock feedlots." -- Bill Rees, spot on as usual. The millions of acres of land that support the single "monocrop" of human organisms in city feedlots is stolen from nature to "grow" humans.

Oh man. This sucks. Oil tanker on fire off the coast of the UK. Thousands of gallons of fuel into the sea... along with sodium cyanide from the cargo ship.... the marine life 💔💔😭😭☠️☠️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz3l...

We are killing ourselves and every other living being, including rivers, lakes, and all the beings who live in them, with plastic. "Monitoring" plastic will not change that. The only thing that could change it is if we STOP MAKING PLASTIC.

Breaking News! Code UFB!!! The daily CO2 number from Mauna Loa exceeded 430 ppm yesterday. This is the first reading above 430 ever recorded. CO2 levels have not been this high since the Pliocene epoch, 3 to 5 million years ago.

Give up on hope and instead work your ass off to protect every square inch so there is something rather than nothing after we humans are done and gone.

What a weird world.

"America’s butterflies are disappearing at ‘catastrophic’ rate" “In just 30 or 40 years we are talking about losing half the butterflies (and other insect life) over a continent! The tree of life is being denuded at unprecedented rates.” apnews.com/article/butt...

Is it better to be older and to have seen and experienced wildlands and watch them destroyed or to be younger and never know they existed?

A 2 hour walk and barely more than 2 minutes without an engine noise of some kind. Today I heard cars, helicopters, small planes and Navy Growlers (insanely loud). Among many other ways we are killing the planet is noise pollution. Sound (and photo) from today.

"Hope is hopium, be it active hope, regular hope, passive hope, or resigned hope. Put almost any word you want (except "false") in front of the word hope, and you will cause me to assume that you are selling something. Something that smells like bullshit." Spot on.

Excellent news: Trump's tariffs will slow the economy, which is the only thing that has ever made the slightest dent in the rapid pace of destruction of the natural world. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPi4...

Surprise, surprise 🙄🤪 BP is going back to fossil fuels... “This is a recognition I think we are not going to get to those ambitious 2030 targets, so we better just focus on keeping the lights on.” youtu.be/8xknlz88T3w?...

Munch munch

“The bird flu outbreak is the worst globally and also in U.S. history, with hundreds of million birds dead since it first turned up in domestic waterfowl in China in 1996. H5N1 now presents an existential threat to the world’s biodiversity." Created in factory farms, now killing wildlife everywhere.

We humans think we're all that. We're really not. From The Great Escape, by Tom Murphy dothemath.ucsd.edu/2025/02/the-...

Main character syndrome: Humans think the world exists for us to have the starring role. Little do we understand that every other species on Earth is required for the play to be successful. As we prance around the stage, knocking off the other characters, we may soon find the theater burning down.

"The energy transition is a slogan but no scientific concept. It derives its legitimacy from a false representation of history. Industrial revolutions are certainly not energy transitions, they are a massive expansion of all kinds of raw materials and energy sources." >>

People frequently cite the Montreal accord as an example of how the world can work together to solve problems. But the world has been failing to meet climate change goals and biodiversity goals and plastic reduction goals for years, decades. >>

How much more “growth” can the earth take?

"It is also a particularly American disease to confuse wealth with intelligence and corporations with those who own them." Great thread, well worth reading the whole thing. threadreaderapp.com/thread/18927...

The researchers estimated that current annual amounts of metals shed from blades at operating European offshore wind facilities to be high enough that, when taken up by seaweed and shellfish, “could exceed safe limits for human consumption.” lindabonvie.substack.com/p/the-toxic-... >>

Sixth mass extinction, by artist Nat Morley.

Overshoot quote of the day: "[O]ur impulse to chase solutions to existential threats is a psychological problem. It’s a form of denial that allows us to sidestep the full depth and systemic nature of our predicament—along with our role in driving it forward." -- Art Berman